Campaign Battles

Now for the part of the expansion that has consumed most of my time and attention: Campaign Battles. In the past, the Shadowlord's forces are constantly attacking the areas that Altana's forces control, and vice versa. We have a campaign map that shows where the battles are currently raging, and an NPC in town that can teleport us to the battlefields for a small fee of Allied Notes. Once you get to the battle, you check in with a Campaign Arbiter, and receive Allied Tags to show that you're participating in the battle. With the tag active, you do not lose experience points if you're killed, and you gain experience/limit points and allied notes for the battle, based on your contribution to it. A sword icon appears next to the names of players and NPCs that are participating in the battle.

In areas that are under the control of the forces of Altana (the good guys), we defend the fortifications from waves of Beastmen attacks. Frequently, there will be squads of NPC fighters to help fight the Beastmen. Some times they'll be there before the battle starts, some times they swoop in at the end, and other times, they never show up. They're very powerful and kill the Beastmen pretty quickly, so people try to pull the mobs off of them to have fights last long enough to get some decent points.

Campaign battles are perfect for quick, casual exp points, and I've been using them to keep my buffer capped and have been getting a lot of merit points with it as well. It may not be as efficient as a merit party, but it's also easy to do in small chunks of time, and is really perfect for someone like me. If I get online early enough before Dynamis or Limbus, I can pop into a battle and pick up 600-2000 points before heading to the Trail Markings or Sagheera. And it's even good for those Saturday afternoons when I just don't feel like being committed to a merit party for 3 hours (I think that's most Saturday afternoons...).

Paladin is a very good job to take to Campaign, since you can tank, fight, and cure. All of these things build up your points, and also make you pretty self-sufficient (except on the Beastmen NM leaders). It seems like 50% of the players in Campaign are Paladins. Puppetmasters also seem to do really well in Campaign, and probably have the same troubles getting merit parties as PLDs.

I also go as PLD/WHM, since I really feel I have to have reraise on at all times. I often end up in Campaign battles where I am the only PC, and those NPCs aren't going to toss me a raise. I really would like to try PLD/DNC, but I'd have to be with someone with raise before I'd want to try that out.

My favorite Campaign battles have been ones that have a small group of players show up and work together. Some people are eager to form parties and help each other out, and it's really a lot of fun. We usually let the fortifications "tank" the horde of mobs, and pull them off one at a time, leaving the NMs for the end. Some of the fights with more players (like Jugner and Rolanberry) are a bit more chaotic and free-for-all, and people seem more reluctant to help each other or to take on the NMs in an organized manner. I've been bringing most of my gear with me, and go into full turtle mode on the NMs, and usually hold hate and stay alive with help from other people curing me, but toward the end, as my MP runs out, I either get killed or lose hate.

I also really like being the only player in a campaign battle, since I can do quite well points-wise. I have to be careful to let all of the beastmen get past me and pull one off the back of the train and then drag it to a safe spot. Then I just whittle them down and find another. This works better with some mobs than others. The magic casters can be pretty troublesome, as I'm built to resist physical damage better. But even if I have to fight the Shadowhand's minions, I can still get plenty of points despite dying, reraising, resting until unweakened and start fighting again.

Campaign's really been helping a lot with my merit points, as I mentioned. I've capped enmity, which meant backing out my 2nd level spell interruption I did back when I wasn't planning to be an end-game PLD and only did merits that would help me leveling other jobs, like BLU. It was a bit sad to actually throw away the two merit points that had cost. I'm currently working on my Sentinel recast, and need 5 more merit points for the final upgrade to have a 4:10 recast instead of the normal 5:00.

Campaign has ranks to go through, but they're different than what we've seen in city missions and assault. Every 5 days you can undergo an evaluation, and if you did well, you get the next higher level medal, but if you did poorly, you can be demoted and lose your medal. The medals are only good for 30 days, so if you don't participate in Campaign for a time, you can lose your rank. There are currently 3 groups of 4 medals - Ribbons, Stars, and Emblems. I'm on my 9th medal, which is the first Emblem level: Copper Emblem of Service. Higher ranks allow you to purchase more items with Allied Notes, gives you access to more Campaign Operations, with the higher leveled ones giving you more exp and AN for reward, and you also have a higher exp point cap for Campaign battles.

The Wings of the Goddess

On November 21, the content for the latest expansion, The Wings of the Goddess, was unlocked. The story behind the expansion is that there are these Cavernous Maws that have appeared/been discovered in several locations on the Mindartia and Quon continents. Upon investigating them, you discover that they take you to "twenty years" in the past, during the Crystal War, and your task is to join up with the mercenary units for one of the three nations, and help fight off the Shadowlord's minions. There are three completely new regions, a "fort" area for each city, which are bypasses for the Tahrongi/La Theine/Konschtat areas, which are not (yet?) accessible in the past.

After I got the expansion installed, I started out doing a bit of light exploration, and happened to talk to the right NPC in Crawlers Nest to get an invitation to the Windurst mercenaries, the Corbra Unit. I made my way to Windurst, travelling as PLD/WHM for reraise/sneak/invisible, and stopping to activate all the Cavernous Maws along the way. You have to go through them in the past once in order to use them in the future, somewhat like Runic Portals - forcing you to do some exploration to unlock the easier travel options. The zones are pretty much the same as they are in the future, with some different buildings, and some different mobs.

There are a lot of new monsters in the past, and it sort of makes one wonder where they all went. Did they drop stuff that was so good they were hunted to extinction? One of the nicest additions are the Pixies. They're high level WHMs, and as long as you haven't killed any of them, they simply drift through zones, handing out Raise IIIs to the fallen players, casting Cure IVs on those they see in yellow (or lower) HP.

Once I got to Windurst, I picked up the mission to become a member of the Cobra Unit, which involved three fairly simple quests. The third quest was a fight with a War Lynx in Fort-Karugo-Narugo, which was a bit harder for some jobs to solo, due to a TP move the lynx can use that drops you to 2 HP. If you're alone and not using shadows, it's likely the next hit will kill you. I didn't know this at the time, so headed up there as PLD/WHM, ready to solo the kitty, and was doing quite well against him. Then boom I was dead. As I rested while weakened, I watched the same thing happen to a MNK/WHM, and then to a PLD/WAR-BLM/WHM duo. So we all teamed up, and killed it so fast that it didn't make sense that it had killed us all just a few minutes earlier.

Over the next week, I made my way to Bastok and then to San d'Oria. In San d'Oria, I did a couple quests to get a deathstone and angelstone for one of my favorite features of the new expansion: 2 new gobbie bag quests! So I now have 70 slots in my gobbie bag, which was a big help, but I'd really like another 10. I still can't carry every piece of PLD gear with me at 70 slots, at least not with food and meds, and at least one free spot for any drops I might want somewhere.

They added two new jobs with the expansion, Dancer and Scholar. I've already talked about Dancer, but I haven't even done the quest to unlock Scholar yet. I'm sure I will eventually, but I don't currently see it as a job that I'll be leveling, so there's no rush.

The biggest addition to the game is the introduction of Campaign, the fight of the cities and their mercenary troops against the Shadowlord and his forces. There are Campaign Operations, which provide you with a small amount of experience points and a good chunk of Allied Notes (the equivalent of conquest points and imperial standing points for the past). Quite a few of these don't involve any fighting, and some you don't even leave the city to do, so they'd be good for quick bits of exp on jobs you don't want to necessarily level in an exp party. You have "tags" like for assault, and can have up to 7 available, getting a new one each day. By doing these operations, you help boost the resources, supplies, intelligence, and so forth for your nation.

This is turning into yet-another wall o' text, so I'll talk about Campaign Battles in a later post.

Limbus Centennial

It's been a long time since I've written a Limbus update. This past Sunday's Limbus run was my 100th! I've missed only one since I joined the group over a year ago. That was because of what turned out to be a gall bladder attack on the last Sunday in November. I think what scared my husband the most about it was the fact that I was too sick for my beloved Limbus. He knew it had to be pretty awful for me to miss that. Gall bladders are funny things - apparently you don't really need them, so mine will be coming out some time when the Ontario medical system decides they can fit me in. In the mean time, I feel like throwing up constantly.

But enough of that.

Limbus has had its share of ups and downs, but in general things have been going very well. We consistently have enough people for successful runs, and for awhile there were fielding dual runs. I think things slowed down for the holidays, and with the addition of a few new people, we'll be back to regular dual runs going forward.

Proto-Omega has become fairly routine for us, but we still haven't beat Proto-Ultima, partially because people won't run away from Citadel Buster like they're supposed to, but also getting bad luck with back-to-back Armor Busters. Lucrezia's been reluctant to take us back to Ultima again until she feels we can follow instructions better, but I think we'll be trying again this week or next. I really really want us to beat that biomechanical nightmare.

Proto-Omega's been rather stingy with some of his body parts. We've got a total of 7 tails, 4 hind legs, 2 eyes, and 1 fore leg. So many of the tails that 7/8 of our eligible lotters have their boots, including me! I got mine Sunday night, along with Zaps. Thunderbolt is the only other person who could have lotted, and he passed for us. If this keeps up, all of our mages will have their own Homam Gambieras, which would be useful for those with jobs that can wear them, like Thom and Serenity.

We had a bit of drama this fall, with someone who took advantage of our overly liberal rules, and made off with two pieces of Homam (including the only godly-for-paladin hands that have dropped) in only 16 runs, and stopped showing up for runs in favor of leveling another job. He was a PLD main, and want to switch his Homam lot to one of the other jobs after he got the two PLD-priority pieces, so he could cherry-pick the rest of the set. He seemed disappointed that we wouldn't let him do that, and kept sneaking into the shell to see if we were going to do a run that he could benefit from, but we got sick of it and kicked him out. I'm still working on rule reform to prevent this from happening in the future, but for now, everyone's in good standing with the shell, so our liberal rules aren't being abused.

We've had a bit of trouble with duos and trios taking over NW Apollyon (Kings) when we need the chip to complete Omega sets. I really wish Square-Enix had made Limbus instanced so we wouldn't have that trouble. It's almost to the point where we should do the run every time we actually can get the zone, and just start sets with each sackholder.

It's still hard for me to believe Kiki actually has 2 pieces of Homam gear, despite the 100 Limbus runs. Between that, and full relic, it shows that persistence, and a good group of people to do stuff with, pays off. Who knows, maybe some day I'll have other things I never thought Kiki would ever get. :-)

Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming

As unimaginable as it was a couple years ago, my little Tarudin has not only completed her Valor armor set, but even has the HQ of the coronet. Over the past month of Dynamis we've had our usual ups and downs, with two failures on the Dynamis Lord (one the melee rushed out to meet him instead of waiting at camp, messing up the mages, on the other, we just didn't do enough damage in a short enough time), some really amazing runs in Beaucedine (8 drops one night), cleared Bastok, fell apart in San d'Oria, had a rousing win in Valkurm, and a bad Megaboss pull in Qufim (but a few nice drops for people). We've had some rare Northlands drops showing up lately, in addition to my new breeches. Lucrezia finally got her Assassin's Armlets, Morgoth his Duelist's Chapeau, and Asarath won the elusive Summoner's Horn.

We're in a phase of shifting members, with some people leaving while others are coming in. We're still a bit short on full-time PLDs, with just Amyalfrodo and I, so we keep trying to rotate through all the people who have PLD at 75. Some grumble more than others, but overall, it feels like it's working OK. Most of them don't want to main tank, so if Amy doesn't make it and Lumikumi's on MNK, it's up to me. I get fewer nights "off" now, but it keeps me busy.

On our December 8th Dynamis-Valkurm run, the Valor Coronet -1 dropped, and I was the only PLD main lot on the run, so it was mine! Bwahahahaha. Oh sorry. Got a bit carried away there. It did make me reflect though, of all the goodies I've got in Dynamis and Limbus, my Valor Surcoat was the only thing I'd actually won a lot on - everything else was mine uncontested. So much for "Kiki always wins". :-) I took my Coronet, my -1, 20 Ordelle Bronzepieces and a gold ingot to Sagheera in Port Jeuno after the run, and the next morning, picked up my fancy new Valor Coronet +1. It gives me 18 more MP, another point of DEF and another point of Enmity over the NQ, and was definitely worth the upgrade, since it's my normal headpiece for most tanking duties. My original coronet was the only relic drop I had from Snakes, so it was in a sense bittersweet, yet somehow appropriate, that it's been replaced by a item I got with TheUltimates.

Last Wednesday, we had an "Expeditionary Force" in Dynamis-Beaucedine (never say the word "farm", or the game punishes you) that was more exciting than usual. Lucrezia deviated from our normal path and opted to take on the Dynamis Icon just past the Yagudos, on the way to the Quadavs. We did fairly well with our massive linkage, but suddenly there was only 10 minutes left on the hourglass, so we quickly ran up to the Quadavs and Luc got the 2 time extension statues there pulled quickly. We moved on to the cliffs, back to the Orc lake, and up to the Goblins for further time extensions, and had well over an hour of good "expeditioning". The drops were scarce until we hit the goblins, but we were fairly well-rewarded at that point, getting DRG, WHM, BRD, NIN, and PLD.

Yes, Valor Breeches dropped. I couldn't believe it, and I happened to be dead at the time (we were fighting the Hydra Corps at this point). They dropped from a Hydra Ranger, not sure why he had them. I typed, "get me up!! quick!!", and I think I had 4 people casting raise on me at the same time. Amyalfrodo was the only other PLD main needing them (Lumikumi got his earlier last year), and she lotted a fairly low double-digit lot. I out-lotted Amy, but she said she would have passed for me since they would complete my set, which is really sweet of her. She's currently the only PLD main with access to Beaucedine and Xarcabard, so hopefully we can get hers soon. She doesn't even have her gauntlets from San d'Oria yet, since we get multiple pairs only on the runs she has to miss, and none when she's present.

So here Kiki is, sporting the complete Valor Armor set (not counting the Valor Cape), something I never thought I'd see her do. Since I upgraded the Coronet, I can't store the set, but eventually I can pick up a new one in Bastok. We had a Bastok run on Saturday and one dropped, but we had a PLD on his first run with us (Deathstorm), and I let him have it instead. Technically he's not allowed to lot until after two runs with us, but he could put it to better use than me. It would have been selfish of me to take it.

I couldn't get a good look at my fancy new pants, so I dressed up my Mithra mannequin in the full set. She's showing a lot of leg for someone in heavy armor, but it looks pretty nice. :-)

"Dancing With Myself"

My "holiday project" for this year was to try out Dancer as a subjob for Paladin. Early in December, I did the Lakeside Minuet quest to unlock the job. It was a fairly simple quest, with some time travel required, and it wasn't long before I found myself with another job available on my job change screen. I got my Vagabond Gear from Quincy, bought a bronze knife +1, and header out to West Sarutabaruta, as a DNC1/BST1.

My plan was to pretty much solo as DNC/BST, since it seemed like a viable combination - DNC has decent charisma and can heal itself after a certain point, and being on the weak side, having a sturdy pet to help take down the prey would be useful. Plus I hadn't tried subbing BST since they'd made the changes that allow a pet to regen while it's not engaged, and they also got rid of the pet penalty, so I was curious to see how it would work.

It was really quite a fabulous combination. I stayed in the Sarutabarutas until I was around 9, then headed into Tahrongi Canyon. At level 12, I got the bright idea of trying the Tiny Lycopodiums just outside the gate in West Sarutabaruta [S]. I charmed a DC, started fighting an EM, and got murderized after it quickly pummled my pet to death. So back I went to Tahrongi, until I hit level 14.

Dancer at the early levels is really not much different from Thief, with the exception of Drain Samba at level 5, which gives you some HP back each time you hit the monster you're fighting. Dancer has a fairly limited selection of weapons available: some knives, hand-to-hand, and rapier-type swords are pretty much it. I opted to use knives until the first sword was available at level 13, then stuck with swords until I could use my Federation Knife at level 25.

At 14, I headed back to the past, and this time, it was really a great spot. I was there until 17, fighting mandies, bunnies, and the occasional crawler, with mandies and bunnies for pets. Once I got to 15 and had Curing Waltz available, things really started to pick up. I would fight EP or DC mobs to build TP and let my pet "rest", then take on high Toughs, cure-tanking them while my pet did the damage. It was really a rush getting chain #4 for over 200 points while soloing.

Around level 17 I was struggling a bit - my pets were too weak and my prey was too strong, so I looked around for a new camp, and had a great time in North Gustaberg [S]. I had to grab a DC bird from the upper level and take it down to the lower level, then keep it alive while I got nice chains on the worms. I tried fighting a lizard, but decided that was a bad idea after a couple close calls with petrification.

At level 19, I headed back to West Sarutabaruta [S], and had a great time until level 24, using crawlers and birds to fight crawlers and birds. It was really a wonderful spot, since I had it all to myself, and there's nothing around to aggro me. And the birds don't link either. I did get a bit tired of the Campaign music playing so much, but that was pretty much the only drawback.

My next camp was in Buburimu Penninsula, where I leveled from 24-26, mostly fighting pugils with pugils, while using the crabs to build TP when I needed it. I got aggro from the anti-fishbot goblins while I was still 24, but they weren't much of a bother.

After I hit 26, I decided it was time for a new camp and was heading back to town when I got a tell from someone I'd partied with on my WHM in the Dunes last year, asking if I wanted to join a party in the Jungles. I thought it'd be fun to see how Dancer worked in a party, so I changed to /NIN, asked Erock to send me a second Federation Knife, and I headed to Yuhtunga. The party was really pretty fun. We had 3 DNC/NINs, 2 NIN/WARs, and a WAR/NIN, and it was so odd to see a functioning party with no MP. I believe we would have done extraordinarily well if there had been enough mandies to keep us going, and no goblins coming along to spoil our fun. After I hit 27, the exp really fell off, and since the group still had mostly 24-25s, I left the party. I switched back to DNC/BST and fought beetles in Sauromogue to get to 28.

I had the bright idea of trying beetles and funguars in Carpenters Landing, but getting paralyzed is really a terrible thing for a dancer trying to cure-tank. I decided to try Lower Delkfutt's Tower, and it wasn't horrible, but it was pretty slow, and I had limited pets to play with. My next day out, I headed to the West Altepa entrance of Korroloka Tunnel, starting out at level 28. At level 28, I took out my NPC Fellow, Balu-Falu (set on soothing healer), just to help me out until I hit level 29 and had more pets to choose from. There was a too-weak goblin patrolling the fishing puddles, which was handy for starting out my TP, and I fought a few leeches before deciding TP Drainkiss pretty much sucks for a Dancer. I stuck to the crab when I could. This was a really nice spot until 31, though admittedly a bit slow with my weak little knife hits on the crabs.

In my search for a camp at 31, I discovered an amazing spot that I was unfortunately a bit too high for. There's a couple flocks of Lycopodiums near Jeuno in Sauromogue Champaign [S], where there's nothing to aggro you. The Lycopodiums are all level 28-30, don't link, and don't use dream flower. There's even a pixie patrolling the area that might be handy at times. Best of all, the Lycopodiums will often stand around watching you fight, so you don't even have to run off to pull them - they're waiting right there for you to fight. Lycopodiums are a bit charm-resistant, at least for my DNC/BST, which provided for some exiciting moments. I think this might be a perfect camp for parties in the Qufim levels, if people are willing to stray from the norm.

After playing with the Lycopodiums for awhile, I headed to Ranguemont Pass, with the idea that I'd work my way to the back tunnel to Beaucedine Glacier, where the stirges should be appropriate pets/prey. Going into a zone like Ranguemont is great, since there were plenty of too-weaks/easy preys to build up 300% TP before starting my "real" fights. And having "Spectral Jig" on Dancer starting at level 25 is great for getting past mobs that will aggro. The Pass was a nice spot, and I liked fighting the weak-to-slashing bats after the levels of hardshelled crabs.

At 33, I headed to Lufaise Meadows, fighting bees and sheep, getting to 34 before I needed to get ready for Dynamis that evening. I figured I'd end up fighting in Lufaise, both near the safehold and up by the lake, until I hit 37, but I ended up trioing beetles in East Altepa with Thala and Venn as MNK/NINs after Salvage one Friday. Meshe joined us later as WAR/NIN. It was a fun little group, but a bit slow because there were other parties and solo people making beetles harder to find than I would have liked. It was pretty fun, and kept me pretty busy as I was pulling, enfeebling, healing, and even tanking at times. When I hit 35, I got another level of Drain Samba, as well as Healing Waltz, which is somewhat like a super-Erase in tha it will remove most bad status effects, one at a time.

I've left Dancer at 35 for now, since I won't get any new abilities with it at 36 or 37, so it's pretty much everything I'll get as a subjob for PLD, except for some minor stat increases. Once they release AF for it, I may consider leveling it further, since it really is a fun job. I've tried it out a bit as a sub for PLD, and haven't really found the perfect situation for it. I think it would be amazing for Campaign, especially Aspir Samba, since I'm having problems keeping my MP up. However, I really really don't want to give up /WHM and its reraise. I end up as the only PC in a lot of my campaign battles, and those NPCs just won't raise me, and at 2k a charge, I don't really want to blow through reraise earrings either. Someone told me they're adding a Reraise Samba to Dancer in an update, but even if they do, I fear it will be higher than level 37.

New title: Troupe Brilioth Dancer

Captain!

OK, so I've been neglecting my blog again... This time I'm blaming Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS.

We've made really good progress on assaults, and Erock, Lucrezia and I got our Captain rank on December 22, while Anastasia and Yobun got it on December 29th. Goto still needs "Operation: Black Pearl", but we should have that wrapped up for him soon.

We focused on completing the First Lieutenant assaults, picking up ones people have missed on nights when we didn't have our group of 6 all present. After we finally won Belleraphon's Bliss, we went back and picked up the ones people were missing. Now that we're pretty much "done", I'd like to see us continue doing assaults, perhaps getting other BEBers to rank up, as well as get points for items people want. A Nyzul Isle static might be worth trying as well.

Lebros Supplies (Lebros Cavern): We'd really been dreading this, but it turned out to be not so bad. We did it with 5 of us, Lucrezia as THF, Yobun as NIN, Erock as RDM, Anastasia as BLM, and Tsakiki as PLD. Most of us subbed THF and had our fancy new Sprinters Shoes from the Wings of the Goddess missions. Lucrezia and Yobun both had enhanced movement speed from gear, and did a lot of aggro-linking of the crawlers, while Erock and Anastasia would resort to sleeping the crawlers. We all ran around feeding the soldiers, and won with a minute or two to spare. We did have two deaths, with both Lucrezia and Erock getting overwhelmed by crawlers, but overall, it certainly wasn't an assault to be dreaded as much as we had.

Siegemaster Assassination (Lebros Cavern): I'd missed out on this assault when our group had done it, since we had more than 6 people that night and I did assaults with TheUltimates instead. Anastasia informed me one Saturday afternoon that there was a pickup group shouting for that assault, so I joined in with them. Daden came along as well. For this assault, you have to kill a Troll general hidden in amongst the other Old Trolls. They respawn, so you have to keep track of which you've killed, or just get lucky and kill fast enough that you get the general. It was a very quick win for us, and another assault got checked off the list.

Egg Conservation (Lebros Cavern): For this assault, you have to protect a bunch of female apkallu from Qiqirn Egglers. There are male apkallu that fight them as well. We failed this on our first attempt, though when we did it a second time, it seemed so easy that it was hard to understand why we'd done so poorly on the first try.

Operation: Snake Eyes (Periqia): This one seemed a bit odd - you have to defeat 3 NM Lamiae to rescue 2 generals that they have kidnapped. This involves some sneaking around, some fighting, and quite a bit of time spent charmed. We managed to win on our first try, and haven't gone back. :-)

Operation: Black Pearl (Lebros Cavern): This assault reminds me a bit of Blitzkrieg, but with the added twist that you're protecting an NPC. The NPC is located in an area with four tunnels leading in. Hordes of monsters come swarming in to get the NPC, and your job is to keep them from touching her. It's pretty easy to lose if you get a bit overwhelmed by the mobs, but if you have the right combination of DD and healing, it's not so bad.

Searat Salvation (Ilrusi Atoll): This is another of the annoying "escort" type assaults, where you have to lead a bunch of easily-frightened Qiqirn divers to safety. Giant Orobons are scattered about the zone, ready to chase down the Qiqirns, making your job more difficult. On the plus side, it's short (15 minute time limit), and there is no fighting or chance of death involved. It still was annoying enough to not really want to do it again however.

Bloody Rondo (Leujaoam Sanctum): For our first First Lieutenant assault, we tackled Bloody Rondo, a fight with Count Dracula. We went melee-heavy our first round, and found his AOE drain made it too difficult, so we ended up with Lucrezia as NIN/WAR, me as PLD/NIN, Erock RDM/BLM, Anastasia and Yobun as BLM/RDM, and Goto as WHM/SMN. This worked out very well for us, though was pretty amusing when Luc and I got turned into bats a few times, not to mention the Cursed Dopplegangers of Kiki running around causing trouble.

The Susanno Shuffle (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): For this assault, you have to defeat Orochi, a Hydra. It took us 5 attempts to finally win, though the first attempt was really just a "let's see what this is like" attempt without Goto. I can't remember the different set-ups we were using for the first four attempts, but we finally managed to win with NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, BRD/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/SMN and PLD/NIN. We were trying for a fragmentation skillchain with Burst II as the magic burst, since we couldn't really do a light chain easily with our set up, but the silly thing kept putting up either a physical or a magical shield, hampering our efforts to damage him. He has a pretty high regen, but we managed to get him whittled down, with only a death or two on our side.

Better Than One (Lebros Cavern): Here you face a Cerberus-type monster, Black Shuck, who summons 8 fire elementals just to make your life more interesting. It took us three attempts to win this one, using NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, PLD/NIN, BRD/WHM, BLM/RDM, and WHM/SMN. On our first two attempts, we didn't handle the elementals very well. What worked for us was having me in the NE tunnel with Anastasia and Goto and helping out with the elementals until we got rid of them, then I joined Luc and Erock fighting Black Shuck. It was a really close call on this one, as he started getting meaner when he had low health, but a well-timed Benediction from Goto saved the day.

The Price is Right (Periqia): This really annoying assault took us 4 tries before we won. In this assault, you face King Goldemar, a Dvergr on a floating throne. He casts a lot of magic, has some really annoying AOE TP skills, and also has 5 floating weapons that he calls to assist him. For our first two attempts, we tried kiting him, with NIN WAR PUP PLD/NIN SMN and WHM, but that really didn't work well at all. So we decided to have Luc straight tank the King in the entrance, with Ana, Erock and I disengaging to fight the weapons as he summoned them. We got really close to winning on this third attempt, but close doesn't count. Out of tags, we resolved to win the following week. Things went fairly smoothly on our fourth attempt, though we did suffer a few deaths and had to have Lucrezia kite the King after all the weapons were dead so we could recover a bit. The bastard finally went down, but not until after a Benediction/Invincible kept us going. We rejoiced and said we'd avoid doing that assault ever again.

Bellerophon's Bliss (Ilrusi Atoll): For our final First Lieutenant assault, we're faced with a dice-rolling goblin and his "pet" Khimaira 14X. On our first attempt, we went as NIN PLD/WAR WAR BLM BRD WHM, and decided to kill the moblin first, so Luc kept Khim busy while we quickly dispatched the moblin, then all turned our attention to the giant kitty. His TP moves were really quite hard on us, and I was taking 200-300 damage from his normal hits, which was a huge drain on all of our MP. We went back for our second try with me PLD/NIN, and this time, we decided to leave the moblin alive, since Khim. only does his TP moves when the Moblin tells him too (and occassionally refuses to listen to the Moblin).

To open the fight, I flashed Khim to get the Moblin to link to me, then Lucrezia took over tanking Khim. while I fought Khim and tried to stay facing the moblin so I could shield block some of his attacks and keep "tanking" the moblin without actually doing anything to it. This approach worked very well for us until a big TP move took out Lucrezia and I had a hard time keeping my shadows up with both the Moblin and Khim. hitting me. We kept going for awhile, but a big move took me out as well, and we kind of fell apart at that point, since Luc was still weak.

We used the same approach on our third attempt, and won! This was the final unique assault for Erock, Lucrezia and I, so we quickly ran off to talk to Naja and were given our final rank of Captain. Then it was back to pick up some of the earlier assaults for Anastasia, Yobun, and Goto.

New title: Captain